Chapter 1: Overview This guide begins with a broad overview of the AP® Program, the AP-preparation model and the concept of AP Vertical Teams®. It includes a plan for beginning, developing and assessing the effectiveness of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. Subsequent chapters discuss important educational goals for AP Vertical Teams and present instructional strategies to assist teachers in helping students attain these goals. Nothing in this guide should be taken as prescriptive. There is no one right way to either create or implement an AP Vertical Team, or to help students succeed in visual art coursework. The same high regard for the teacher as an expert, which underlies the College Board’s AP Program, is also a fundamental premise of the AP-preparation model and of the AP Vertical Teams concept. The AP® Program With more than 30 courses in a wide variety of subject areas, AP provides willing and academically prepared high school students with the opportunity to study and learn at the college level. Each AP course is modeled after a comparable college course, and college and university faculty play a vital role in ensuring that AP courses align with college-level standards. AP courses culminate in a suite of college-level assessments that are developed and scored by college and university faculty as well as experienced AP teachers. AP Exams provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge they have acquired and the proficiencies they have developed. Participation in the AP Program offers students many benefits. They are introduced to a rich and rigorous college-level curriculum. Those who successfully complete an AP Exam in May have the opportunity to receive college credit or advanced placement, depending on the credit policy of the college they choose to attend. Numerous former AP students speak of an easier transition from high school to college due to the strong learning skills and habits of mind acquired in their AP courses. As the number of students enrolling in AP courses grows each year, AP teachers find their classes populated by increasingly diverse learners with varying levels of preparation for the demands of an AP course. Many educators believe that more students could reap the benefits of participation in AP courses if they were introduced earlier to the learning skills and habits of mind (e.g., self-discipline, critical thinking) necessary for success in the AP Program. The AP-Preparation Model The AP-preparation model is a suite of Pre-AP® and AP professional development resources and services intended to: · build rigorous curricula; · promote access to AP courses for all students; · introduce skills, concepts and assessment methods across curricula and instructional levels, in order to prepare all students for success when they take AP and other challenging courses; and · strengthen curricula and increase the academic challenge for all students. The purpose of the AP-preparation model is to equip all middle and high school teachers with the strategies necessary to engage their students in active, advanced learning. The goal of the AP preparation model is to ensure that all middle and high school students develop the skills, habits of mind and concepts needed for success in college. The AP-preparation model is grounded in the College Board’s policy on equitable access to AP courses. Conceptually, the AP-preparation model is based on the following two important premises: · the expectation that all students can perform at rigorous academic levels. This expectation should be reflected in curriculum and instruction throughout the school so all students are consistently being challenged to expand their knowledge and skills. · the belief that we can best prepare every student for higher intellectual engagement by starting skill development and knowledge acquisition as early as possible. Addressed effectively, the middle and high school years can provide a powerful opportunity to help all students acquire the knowledge, concepts and skills needed to engage in a higher level of learning. Unfortunately, many schools have developed gatekeeping or screening requirements that go far beyond what is appropriate to ensure that an individual student has had sufficient preparation to succeed in an AP course. The College Board strongly believes that all students should have access to preparation for AP and other challenging courses, and that pre-AP teaching strategies should be reflected in all courses taken by students prior to their enrollment in AP. The College Board discourages using “Pre-AP” in the title of a course and on a student’s transcript because there is no one fixed or mandated pre-AP curriculum that students must take to prepare for AP and other challenging course work. Rather than using “Pre-AP” in course titles, the College Board recommends the adoption of more comprehensive pre-AP programs that work across instructional levels and subject areas to prepare the entire diversity of a school’s student population for AP and college. We applaud the efforts of our many colleagues who enact that commitment in classrooms around the world. Schools should also avoid rushing to install AP courses without simultaneously implementing a plan to prepare students and teachers in lower grades for the rigor of the program. Additionally, schools should carefully consider and secure the resources necessary to support the program before implementing AP courses. The Importance of Equity and Access All willing and academically prepared students deserve the opportunity to succeed in rigorous, college-level experiences and the advantages they offer. For this reason, the AP Program shares educators’ mission to connect traditionally underserved minority and low-income students to AP courses. AP encourages all educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their schools’ AP programs, and to ensure that their AP classes reflect the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of their student body. The College Board encourages schools to make every effort to eliminate gatekeeping requirements for enrollment in AP courses. Because research has not established correlations between gatekeeping practices and actual success on an AP Exam, the College Board strongly discourages using the following as requirements for admission to an AP course: · Grade point average · Grade in a required prerequisite course · Recommendation from a teacher · AP teacher’s discretion · Standardized test scores · Course-specific entrance exam or essay One of the silent barriers to equity and access can be a teacher who makes decisions for his or her students about who should be taking the AP Exam. To complete the AP experience, students need to sit for the exam, and all students enrolled in an AP course should be encouraged to take the corresponding exam. When they are initially expanding access to AP, some schools may experience an initial drop in the percentage of students scoring 3 or higher on the exam, but in the long term, the increase in the number of students served by the AP program is typically accompanied by an increase in the number of successful AP students. Increasing Access and Success By beginning as early as middle school to provide instruction in key knowledge and skill sets, teachers will find that students are better prepared for AP courses and more eager to continue being successful. If schools start by viewing all students as potential candidates for AP courses and building those students’ skills over time, the number of dedicated, hard working, college-bound students will grow. When all teachers have high expectations for all of their students, students are more likely to meet those expectations. Building an AP program is a shared responsibility among teachers, counselors, administrators, students and parents. The College Board offers resources designed to help schools enhance and expand their AP programs and ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to participate in AP. On AP Central® (apcentral.collegeboard.com), teachers and administrators can find extensive information about AP courses and exams, sample syllabi, instructional materials and more. AP Potential™ (www.collegeboard.com/appotential) is a free, Web-based tool that schools can use to determine which students have the potential to succeed in AP courses. The College Board’s regional offices can help schools meet their professional development needs. (Visit collegeboard.com for details.) Pre-AP professional development opportunities and the implementation of AP Vertical Teams can enhance educators’ ability to deliver content in a greater variety of ways to meet the needs of traditional as well as divergent learners. By meeting the learning-style needs of greater numbers of students, student success can improve. This results in a positive cycle of motivation in which success fuels a desire on the part of students to do even better. Over time, schools that develop Vertical Teams will see an increase in the number of students who are prepared to be successful in AP courses. AP Vertical Teams® Purposes of AP Vertical Teams The College Board facilitates the AP-preparation model by promoting AP Vertical Teams® — teams of educators from different instructional levels in a given discipline who work cooperatively to develop and implement a vertically aligned program. The goal of AP vertical teaming is to help students acquire the skills and proficiencies they need to successfully participate in an academically stimulating and challenging AP program. An AP Vertical Team should aim to do the following: · Facilitate the exchange of information among individuals who share a common purpose but who operate on different academic levels and who may hold very different organizational perspectives on instruction. · Create a culture that connects people, in order to accomplish the common purpose of helping students learn and succeed. · Establish instructional connections that create a seamless education for students. · Facilitate a systemic view of the educational institutions and processes involved. · Establish a process where individuals from different academic levels can relate to each other in a secure and meaningful manner in order to work toward the team’s goals. Build professional relationships and find creative ways to continually improve education. · These goals emphasize standards of teaching that: · address individual students’ interests, strengths, experiences and needs; · select and adapt curricula from a wide variety of sources; · focus on student understanding and use of knowledge, ideas and inquiry processes; · continuously assess student understanding; · increase student responsibility for learning; · support a classroom community with cooperation, shared responsibility and respect; and work cooperatively with other teachers. · Emerging from this approach are two overarching goals for AP Vertical Teams: first, to improve academic performance for all students in earlier grades by introducing skills and concepts needed for success in AP and other challenging courses, and second, to improve performance and participation in the AP Program. These overarching goals, in turn, are accomplished through two primary strategies, which serve as focal points of this guide: · Curriculum alignment that spirals the development of AP skills and prerequisite content knowledge across grades, in anticipation of the AP course. · Instructional practices embedded throughout the courses preceding AP that develop students’ knowledge and proficiencies, with eventual enrollment in an AP course in studio art as the goal. Professionals who have participated in AP Vertical Teams have identified a variety of benefits. These teams · provide a broader and more diverse population of students with greater access to challenging academic opportunities; · encourage implementation of innovative instructional strategies; · foster the development of a coordinated and collaborative educational community; · promote a greater enthusiasm for teaching and learning; and · empower teachers to realize and sustain meaningful curricular reform that ultimately leads to empowering students to become independent learners. An AP Vertical Team can make the AP Program accessible to more students by creating a directed and focused approach through the collaboration of teachers at multiple instructional levels. Teachers who have already established AP Vertical Teams have been impressed with the impact of team planning on the overall curriculum. Students at each level are better prepared and show an overall rise in their proficiency level. Guideposts for AP Vertical Teams The following six topics are important foundational principles for successful AP Vertical Teams. Standards. Successful schools have a shared understanding of the skills and knowledge required to increase student achievement at all levels. Because the AP Program is a globally recognized example of educational excellence, high academic standards for student achievement can be measured by success in AP. Implementing the AP-preparation model across the curriculum can help raise instructional standards in all classes that precede AP. To further support this goal when aligning studio art curricula, the AP Vertical Team must consider national, state and local standards for visual arts study, as well as applicable standards from appropriate professional organizations. Equity and Access. When the work of AP Vertical Teams introduces students to essential academic skills in a timely, coordinated and systematic manner, a greater number of students have the opportunity to develop the skills and habits of mind necessary to succeed in and beyond the AP Program. AP courses cease to be isolated classes available only to the upper echelon of students and instead become academic opportunities for a broad population of students who are willing and able to accept the challenge of completing college-level work while in high school. Instructional Innovation. To develop the independent learning skills crucial to success in AP courses, teachers generally create and implement instructional strategies that develop higher-level analytical and communication skills as well as place greater responsibility on the students for their own academic progress. In addition, teachers involved with AP Vertical Teaming recognize that curricular creativity and ingenuity are essential to designing and delivering a vertically aligned curriculum. Coordination. By promoting frequent communication among educators about instructional standards and strategies, AP Vertical Teams foster the development of an educational community that is committed to improving student performance by creating a continuum of learning among classes and across instructional levels. This process helps reduce repetition and enables teachers to encourage students to apply their existing skills and knowledge to new and more challenging material. Increased coordination can also enable administrators, teachers and students to develop a clearer vision of how the curriculum unfolds, thus enhancing their ability to understand its goals. Collaboration. An AP Vertical Team’s collaborative nature and its connection to the AP Program’s standards and expectations improve educators’ chances of realizing and sustaining meaningful curriculum reform. No longer is one individual trying to move a mountain. Rather, a concerted effort among numerous individuals can foster curriculum reform. AP Vertical Teams, regardless of the discipline, encourage the growth of critical thinking skills and empower students to become independent learners who possess the skills to play an active role in, and take significant responsibility for, their own education. Enthusiasm. A more stimulating, challenging, coordinated and relevant curriculum, which is aimed at giving students the tools and knowledge to succeed in present course work and future endeavors, excites students about learning. The clearer sense of purpose and community that teachers experience as members of an AP Vertical Team also promotes greater enthusiasm for teaching and learning.
Chapter 2: AP Vertical Team Development Creating an AP Vertical Team Community for Studio Art AP Vertical Teams vary in size, composition and nature of participation. Schools setting out to create an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art face two initial questions: Who should be involved? How large should the team be? The best way to begin is to take an inventory of colleagues who will most likely support the improvement of studio art programs. Many team construction models exist; the following chart outlines a number of possibilities for the scale and composition of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art, as well as the benefits and drawbacks each option can offer. Examples of Scale and Composition Options for AP Vertical Teams for Studio Art Scale of AP Vertical The most effective teams are the most inclusive. However, the team’s size should enable efficiency and coherence. Therefore, team initiators need to consider the following questions: · Should the team focus on just one level of instruction at a time, or on all levels at once through a common set of skills? · Who, for reasons of leadership and expertise, must be on the team? · What combination of personnel from different schools a •nd instructional levels is best? · Should the team include all visual arts teachers at all instructional levels? · Which colleagues should attend meetings on an occasional basis as needed? · How large is too large? If the full team is large, can smaller working groups be created within it? AP Vertical Teams often consist of seven to twelve members. To increase effectiveness, it is important that the team include at least one member from each instructional level. These team members are responsible for sharing information with colleagues at the appropriate instructional level. In addition to teachers, AP Vertical Teams frequently include district administrators, principals, curriculum coordinators and school counselors. The roles these individuals play in scheduling, budgeting and making curricular decisions make them beneficial to the team’s success. Since college and universities ultimately award AP credits, a college- or university-level instructor can be a valuable asset to an AP Vertical Team. Engaging Stakeholders and Identifying Roles Engaging the different stakeholders in the vertical teaming effort requires acknowledging why each of them is important, and showing them why and how their participation will be valuable to them, to their schools and, ultimately, to the students. The following sections describe in more detail some elements to consider when seeking support and participation from the various constituencies of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. Studio Art Studio art This group will be the most affected by the work of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. Developing a clearly articulated, vertically aligned and well-implemented program will benefit both these teachers and their students. An AP Vertical Team can offer visual art instructors the following benefits: · A detailed understanding of and thoughtfully articulated plan for more efficient student acquisition of visual art proficiencies · Collaborative sharing of best practices that help students increase their knowledge, proficiency and learning strategies · Opportunities for professional growth and sharing of instructional strategies · The capacity to anticipate the skill levels of the students coming into their classes from the previous grade or instructional level · A greater understanding of how their own instruction fits into the overall studio art program · Support from colleagues regarding standards and pedagogy To be most effective, the AP Vertical Team should include teachers from all relevant grade levels: high school and middle school studio art teachers and elementary school teachers. Middle school and elementary school teachers are a vital part of the team, and special consideration should be given to their involvement. To offer them more convenient access to meetings, some meetings should be held in the middle or elementary school building. All teachers should be encouraged to present the ideas, approaches and materials that have proven most successful in their teaching. School districts with no direct feeder patterns can work at the district level to form AP Vertical Teams for Studio Art that consist of teachers of a specific language from high schools and middle schools and, if possible, elementary schools. They may also wish to organize horizontal teams (comprised of teachers of the same course or instructional level across schools) to improve the consistency of preparation among students who come from different schools or have different teachers. Committed educators from grades, buildings or districts that currently do not offer instruction in Studio Art can also be included, particularly if they are considering the introduction of various visual art courses. This would help ensure an articulated visual art program throughout a student’s precollegiate school experience. Administrators Creating a cohesive and productive AP Vertical Team for Studio Art requires support from both district- and school-level administrators. Administrative support is vital not only for the creation and success of the team itself, but also for the implementation of plans developed by the team. As experienced team builders, motivators and leaders of change, trustees, superintendents, principals, curriculum coordinators and deans should know that they play the following critical roles in coordinating efforts to benefit the AP Vertical Team: · As the leaders and public faces of their schools, they can communicate the mission and work of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art to the district administration, school board, faculty, parents and other community members. · As active participants, they can help the AP Vertical Team shape its goals and support its vision. · As program evaluators, they can examine the AP Vertical Team’s impact on student learning and achievement. · As facilitators, they can build the AP Vertical Team’s work into a schoolwide or districtwide strategic plan. · As coordinators, they can build bridges between the work of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art and that of AP Vertical Teams in other subject areas. · Administrators can demonstrate their commitment to the AP Vertical Team in a number of ways. They can develop school policies that encourage student participation in rigorous learning, which increases the probability that more students will participate in the AP program. Administrators can also support ongoing professional development, where AP Vertical Team members have an opportunity to meet with colleagues from other schools and discuss such topics as the standards and expectations of the AP Program, strategies for motivating and supporting students, and innovative instructional strategies. They can create a safe environment for learning and improvement, where teachers are encouraged to think innovatively, implement new ideas and grow professionally. Additionally, administrators can help the team with a variety of logistical matters, which include: · identifying individuals who can serve as members of the AP Vertical Team; · providing access to existing academic data or setting up systems to collect additional relevant data; · facilitating communication among administrators at the schools represented by theAP Vertical Team and among the team members at multiple campuses; · coordinating meetings that involve educators from multiple campuses; · scheduling blocks of time for the AP Vertical Team to meet regularly over an extended timeperiod; · providing meeting rooms, supplies, resources and technical support; · providing substitute teachers and/or classroom coverage for AP Vertical Team members to meet during the academic day; · facilitating AP Vertical Team meetings on in-service days or during in-service time; and · providing financial resources, such as professional development funds, for AP Vertical Team members to meet outside of the academic day (e.g., during weekends, holidays, vacations, before or after school). For administrators to promote the team’s goals, they must be kept informed about its work, no matter how involved they may be in the team. AP Coordinators A school’s AP Coordinator may be an administrator, a school counselor or a teacher who does not teach an AP class. Since they have the primary responsibility for organizing an AP program and the administration of the exams, AP Coordinators have a clear vision of the factors that might lead to the success of the program. Because they serve as a link to administrators, teachers, parents and students, AP Coordinators can help all stakeholders understand the advantages of taking advanced visual art classes by presenting an overview of the AP Program along with strategies to increase student achievement. They can explain that the skills and knowledge essential to student success at the AP level requires that a clearly defined, vertically aligned program be implemented at each instructional level. Therefore, it is crucial that AP Coordinators be members of the Vertical Team. School Counselors School counselors are an important conduit to students and their parents. Their role as advisers on course selection and postsecondary opportunities makes their support of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art of key importance. Counselors can promote the view that it is in a student’s best interest to take visual art courses, the goals of which are rigorous but well defined by the local school district. They can also stress the importance of a vertically aligned approach to visual art study. Furthermore, school counselors can play a valuable role in working with the team to allay student, parent or administrator concerns about the development of a challenging curriculum for studio art. The AP Vertical Team can draw on a counselor’s insight into how best to convince students and parents of the benefits of working toward AP-level standards. In order to secure their commitment, school counselors should be made aware of the following reasons for their participation: · They can provide important input in the development of a curriculum that will meet the needs of the students they are advising. · Their support and their ability to communicate positively and clearly to students and parents will be essential to setting and achieving goals for student inclusion. · They will be key players in assuaging initial fears that advanced visual art study may be too challenging for some students. · They can help the team develop strategies for long-term communication about curriculum goals, changes and strategies. Parents Recent studies have shown that the success of a child’s education depends upon parental involvement. It is therefore vital to inform parents of the benefits of a well-articulated curriculum. Since the curriculum today may be more rigorous (though at the same time more student-friendly) than the curricula parents experienced when they were in school, some parents need encouragement to endorse a curriculum that embraces the ambitious goals of an AP program. Furthermore, since the curriculum developed by an AP Vertical Team almost always results in more challenging content coupled with more sophisticated assignments for students, some parents may become concerned that their children, who may initially struggle with the new curriculum, are being asked to engage in course work that is too difficult. Occasionally, their immediate reaction is to request that teachers simplify assignments or be less demanding in their evaluations of assignments. Parents should be encouraged to discuss their concerns with teachers, but they should also be reassured that some academic struggle is to be expected and is, in fact, at the core of the learning process. The AP Vertical Team for Studio Art can communicate its goals to parents through the local PTA or through “AP nights” that present the benefits of the AP Program. Even though students do not take AP courses until high school, they may need to begin planning for that possibility before they leave middle school; thus, it is important for parents and students to begin to understand the AP Program as early as possible. Parents also need to know that they play an important role in the success of the program. · Parents can help schools secure funding, publicly support teachers and serve as advocates with the local board of education. · Parental support of the AP Vertical Team’s work can help motivate students to excel in visual art coursework. If parents are particularly interested in visual art or proficient in visual art skills, they can become part of the team. Once identified and encouraged to participate, these parents can communicate to others how AP Vertical Teams and sustained, sequenced programs of visual art study will enhance a child’s future success in academics or the workplace. Students Because their academic success is the ultimate goal of the process, students are key stakeholders in AP vertical teaming. Based on their performance on rigorous AP Exams, students can earn college credit, advanced placement or both. Thus, students should be introduced early on and in a consistent fashion to the essential concepts, skills and habits of mind required for success in AP and college courses. Vertical teaming can expand access to academic opportunities for a broader range of students. All students can perform at rigorous academic levels if properly supported. Curriculum and instruction at every level should reflect this expectation so that all students are consistently challenged to expand their knowledge and language proficiencies as they progress from one grade to the next. To prepare every student for higher intellectual engagement, the development of key skills and the acquisition of core knowledge has to begin as early as possible and progress through instructional levels in a coordinated manner. Students need to know that their active participation in an AP Vertical Team program can provide them with opportunities to: · experience less repetitive instruction from one year to the next; · be part of a more active learning environment; · experience a greater emphasis on the development of higher-order thinking and communication skills; and · take a greater responsibility for their own academic progress. Higher Education Faculty Involving higher education faculty in AP Vertical Teams has reciprocal benefits. The appeal for college and university faculty is direct involvement in an organized curricular program that prepares students for success in studio art studio art courses when they reach college. An AP Vertical Team will benefit from access to an expert who not only has information about the knowledge and skills necessary for student success at the college level, but who also can share information about the college’s policy on credit or placement for AP Exam grades. In addition, higher education faculty who are participating in AP Vertical Teams acquire first-hand knowledge of the academic rigor of an AP course, which can be used to inform university or college decisions on whether to create or modify their AP credit or placement policies. State Departments of Education State departments of education can assist schools by providing information and support as an AP Vertical Team is formed. They may also know of grant programs to which schools and districts can apply for funding to begin vertical teaming efforts. State departments of education can also assist Vertical Teams with professional development that involves meeting state standards, using student data and improving student achievement. Professional Organizations Professional organizations can be valuable sources of expertise and may be included as stakeholders in developing an AP Vertical Team. Foundations that raise funds to assist independent and public schools can provide funds for AP vertical teaming. State, regional and national teacher associations often have committees on professional development that can provide expertise and sometimes suggest resources or offer funding and guidance during Vertical Team formation. Teacher Unions Teacher unions represent many stakeholders in education, and can aid in identifying educational resources as well as possible funding to support the AP Vertical Team. Teacher unions often include one or more elected officers who work on designing union-supported professional development efforts and also work with the school district to ensure that professional development conforms to contractual expectations for the teachers. These officers may assist with professional development for the AP Vertical Team by providing expertise and guidance, training, financial support for training and union materials to assist with training of Vertical Team members. Teacher unions can also be important vehicles for recruiting teachers who are interested in becoming a part of the Vertical Team. Meeting Challenges and Addressing Special Circumstances Building an inclusive AP Vertical Team for Studio Art can involve a number of challenges, depending on the special circumstances of a program, school or district. The leaders and potential team members should consider the following issues when deciding whom to engage. Single Schools and Independent Schools Teachers in an independent school or in a school not connected to others in a district have a unique opportunity to develop a highly articulated curriculum. Frequently, the studio art departments in these schools are small and cohesive; what one teacher does directly affects the classrooms of colleagues. In this situation, it is particularly important for the entire department to meet as an AP Vertical Team. Although independent schools have considerable freedom to deliver instruction and make curriculum decisions based on individual teacher preferences, the advantages of articulating a coherent overall program are enormous. In cases where teachers are physically separated, a “virtual” Vertical Team can be created using telecommunication technology. Teachers in Smaller Programs A one- or two-person department of Studio Art can add value to an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. They might, for example, become members of an AP Vertical Team, or a specific visual art team, that is districtwide, countywide or even statewide. They will often bring a fresh, unexpected or enlightening point of view to such endeavors. In the case where there is only one visual art teacher in an entire school district, this teacher can gain and share much by working with other visual art teachers in the school or district. Team members can share strategies and classroom activities and adapt them to suit the needs of both the learners and the subject being studied at all levels. Being part of an AP Vertical Team can be especially valuable to these teachers because it provides a way for professional sharing and support. Faculty Turnover As potential new faculty members are interviewed, the leadership of the team should acquaint candidates with the goals and work of the AP Vertical Team. In addition, new faculty members should be encouraged to join the team, as it provides an excellent means for developing the collegial relationships necessary for success in the local teaching community. Reluctant Colleagues Some colleagues may not believe in the vision of the AP Vertical Team. Nevertheless, these people should be kept informed of the team’s work and should be encouraged to participate in that work. They should be given every opportunity to collaborate with the Vertical Team members and to take part in curricular and methodological initiatives. Because the team’s work will affect how and what is taught, it is to their advantage to participate — and, more importantly, it is to their students’ advantage. Other Challenges An AP Vertical Team may be new in a school district and, therefore, not well understood by all the groups that have a stake in its success. In district publications, parent meetings and other forums, the AP Vertical Team can publicize the ways in which it offers all students an opportunity to benefit from advanced coursework. To communicate its vision, the team might consider making a presentation to the school community about successful innovations in visual art study and AP education. Stakeholders may be willing to support changes if they know that the work of AP Vertical Teams has been successful in other places or other subject areas. Thus, the team may wish to invite someone from another demographically comparable school system — for instance, a district or regional specialist in Studio Art or a representative from another AP Vertical Team — to join the presentation. In all cases, the rationale for establishing an AP Vertical Team must focus on what happens to students as they study visual art. Educators will find it much easier to adjust teaching practices and methods if they are doing so in concert with others who believe that a coherent curriculum will positively affect a student’s attitude toward achievement in their classrooms. Hesitant individuals will need reassurance that they will not be expected to make changes overnight, or without collegial and professional support. AP Vertical Team Groundwork Developing an Overarching Educational Philosophy To bring coherence to the curricular changes developed by the AP Vertical Team, the members must share an overarching teaching philosophy. All members will be involved in defining the theoretical basis for the curriculum that the team is charged with developing. This will necessitate considerable in-depth discussions, because the decisions made will produce the strength of the foundation upon which the team will construct its curriculum. Instead of agreeing on any existing philosophy, AP Vertical Team members should themselves develop a sharedphilosophy with all members involved in the decision making. To develop a coherent, clearly articulated, vertically aligned studio art curriculum, each teacher must be able to retain a personal teachingstylewhile following the “philosophy” agreed upon by the AP Vertical Team during its deliberations. It is therefore important to distinguish between “philosophy” and “style.” For this purpose, “philosophy” relates to the approach or methodology by which one teaches. The AP Vertical Team will base its curriculum development upon this philosophy. The teaching “style,” on the other hand, is the method, developed according to an individual’s particular tastes and imagination, by which a teacher applies the teaching philosophy advocated by the AP Vertical Team. In other words, while the overarching curricular philosophy needs to be followed, the application of a teaching style allows individual teachers to engage their own personalities in bringing the curriculum to life in the classroom. Putting Philosophy Into Practice Courses in Studio Art offer students the opportunity to explore and appreciate the richness and complexity of human societies, to grapple with new ideas and divergent interpretations and to create their own understanding of the human experience. These courses encourage students to become independent learners and offer them the chance to sharpen their analytical and communication skills as they prepare for a life filled with questions, challenges and opportunities. Given these benefits, how can visual art educators increase the number of students who participate and succeed in AP courses in Studio Art? How do we create a path of inclusion rather than exclusion, an open door rather than a narrow pipeline? Chapter 4 of this guide is devoted to presenting specific instructional strategies designed to help students improve their proficiency in the target language and their knowledge of target cultures, while also preparing them for success in AP courses. The effectiveness of these strategies is enhanced in a context that recognizes language education as an integrated process of instructional strategies and assessment. Creating a curriculum that builds upon this integrated approach is instrumental to promoting student success in AP courses in Studio Art. Students frequently become proficient at certain discrete tasks, but are unable to see the connection between these tasks or succeed in using several of the tasks to complete more complex assignments. The integrated process encourages teachers to create and explicitly discuss the connections between different teaching strategies and between these teaching strategies and assessment techniques. The development of particular skills associated with visual art proficiency can serve to prepare students effectively for the rigor of AP course work. Creating, developing and sustaining an AP Vertical Team is essential to increasing student access to and success in the AP Program. Teachers on an AP Vertical Team have the opportunity to raise overall standards and enhance student preparation through better curriculum coordination and pedagogical innovation. By working together, team members can create an educational process that prepares students to become independent learners. By modeling practical teaching strategies, this guide is designed to help members of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art work together to help students achieve these goals across classes and from one instructional level to the next. AP Vertical Team Leadership Development A strong AP Vertical Team has a clear vision of the goals and developmental direction of the team, and effective leadership is crucial to the realization of those goals. A Vertical Team will benefit from structured leadership that includes the following two roles. Vertical Team Facilitator A crucial member of any AP Vertical Team will be the facilitator. Ideally, the facilitator should possess a broad view of the studio art curriculum and have experience at both middle and high school levels. For teams without such an individual, the facilitator might be any member of the team who has demonstrated leadership ability. The team might recruit a facilitator from outside its school system, such as a curriculum specialist or coordinator from another district, who is experienced in working with teachers from various levels. The team may also choose to have members take turns as the facilitator; if so, the facilitator(s) might seek professional development training that focuses on the coordination of group processes. Effective facilitation employs the team members’ diverse abilities to solve problems and make decisions. Regardless of who becomes the facilitator, he or she must be prepared to lead the team by: · arranging team meetings, setting agendas and adhering to the schedule; · gathering data and procuring materials needed for discussion at meetings; · coordinating discussions and keeping the group focused; · ensuring that the minutes of meetings are recorded, preserved and distributed promptly; · following through on goals and resolutions; and · working with administrators to continue and expand the necessary support. Facilitators should also create an atmosphere of trust, respect, candor and fairness by: · listening to feedback and answering questions clearly; · providing constructive criticism and addressing problems as needed; and · giving praise and recognition. Vertical Team Secretary Another key member of the AP Vertical Team is the secretary or recorder. One person may assume this role, or team members might rotate the responsibility for keeping detailed notes of the meetings and distributing them promptly. The AP Vertical Team can also decide who will keep the group’s long-term records, especially data that supports the team’s progress. Because all AP Vertical Team members should be potential leaders, the work of the team should encourage the development of certain leadership skills among all involved. To be an effective member of the team, a participant needs to develop attitudes and behaviors based on respect for the needs of others. For example, because team members should not feel pressured to acquiesce to behaviors or ideas with which they do not agree, all members need to develop habits of positive criticism.
Action Plan for AP Vertical Team Implementation Whatever the size or composition of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art, all members should work collaboratively to achieve the team’s goals by engaging in the following general activities. · Establish a vision and common purpose that support dedication to high standards and expectations for all students. · Implement an inclusive, rather than an exclusive, policy of student access to rigorous instruction. · Provide time and resources for frequent planning and collaboration among Vertical Team members to discuss curriculum content and skills, exchange ideas and teaching strategies, design classroom assessment measures, provide a support network and evaluate the program’s effectiveness. · Research and implement instructional methodologies that provoke higher levels of thinking and emphasize greater student responsibility for learning. · Enable initial and ongoing professional development to implement strategies for motivating and supporting students, and to discuss innovative teaching techniques. · Schedule frequent opportunities to communicate the program’s goals and progress with parents, students, faculty, community members and district leaders. · Designate at both the school and district levels a system of leadership and accountability to implement and support the program. The importance of creating an action plan cannot be overstated. Designing a clear set of directives from the outset will prove invaluable to facilitating the organized development and work of the AP Vertical Team. The action plan should address topics such as: · the AP Vertical Team’s goals; · the time frame for implementing the Vertical Team and other initiatives designed to prepare students for success in AP courses; · the schedule of meetings; · a prioritized list of deliverables or milestones; · designations of responsibility for meeting specific goals or milestones; · due dates for all goals or milestones; and · the means of evaluating the team’s success in meeting those goals. Establishing Ground Rules During the first meeting, the team should establish fundamental guidelines or procedures for that meeting and for all following meetings. Establish ground rules that will make deliberations more effective and with which all participants are comfortable. Establish a method for evaluating each meeting’s progress. Determine the next meeting date, set the goals for that meeting and create a tentative meeting schedule for the semester or year. Each member of the AP Vertical Team is critical to the success of the entire studio art program, and each member’s contribution must be valued. The first meeting might begin with activities that allow members to get to know one another. This is not the meeting to tackle sensitive issues. Before an AP Vertical Team can successfully continue its discussions about the program, the members of the team must feel comfortable expressing their opinions, beliefs, hopes, concerns and insecurities. This requires a high level of trust among team members, and it may take time and effort to develop that trust. In her book 100 Ways to Build Teams, Carol Scearce includes the following comments on teams and team building: · The most common cause of team failure is the inability of team members to get along. · People often think trust is automatically built into their team because they are committed and have good will. · Ignoring the mechanics of teamwork will undoubtedly lead to trouble. · Team guidelines usually prevent misunderstandings and disagreements. · In order for feedback to be effective, members must trust each other. · In a strong team, nothing is too trivial to celebrate.3 The first meeting should end with a quick evaluation of the meeting’s work, emphasizing what has been accomplished. This can be important for keeping on task and for establishing a tone of candor. Taking even five minutes at the end of a meeting to invite comments on the process will be invaluable for establishing an ongoing and effective dialogue during subsequent meetings. Allowing for confidential written feedback on the process may provide the AP Vertical Team leadership with the most valuable and candid insights at the beginning, when confidence and trust have yet to be established. Setting Goals Reaching consensus on a set of clearly articulated goals is one of the AP Vertical Team’s first and most crucial tasks. However, the team should recognize that some of its initial goals will probably shift and evolve as the work progresses, even while the main goal — a well-articulated program that addresses student needs from the novice level through the AP Exam — remains consistent. For example, the AP Vertical Team might encounter some changes or obstacles that lie outside the control of the team itself. The team should make every effort to determine whether they might still have some way of affecting those changes or obstacles. When this is not possible, the team should carefully consider how it could adapt to them. AP Vertical Team members should continuously consider the following questions while engaging in this process: · Do we need to restate our goals? · Do we have any additional goals? · Are there any new strategies that will help us achieve our goals? · Is there anything that we need to learn more about? The following goal-setting template presents one option for organizing the team’s thinking on this subject. Once the team establishes its goals, it should draw up an action plan to clearly describe how it plans to achieve each goal. First, the team must decide what will constitute adequate evidence that a goal has been attained. Then, the team must determine the actions necessary to generate this evidence. After determining the appropriate actions, the team must designate the person or persons responsible for engaging in those actions and producing the necessary evidence. Finally, the team must set a time frame or deadline for completing those tasks. The template that follows is one example of how this action plan might be documented. Team leaders should emphasize from the outset that the work of an AP Vertical Team is an ongoing task, and that the “final” product might well be years away from the starting point. Establishing a Timeline The AP Vertical Team should establish a basic timeline to guide the team’s work and to serve as a working plan that can be freely revised as the work unfolds. Matters to consider in establishing points on the timeline may include the following: · What reports (e.g., Vertical Team progress reports for faculty, parents or district administrators) or other documents will be required? · When will various sections of the report or other documents be due? · When will final materials (e.g., summative or year-end progress reports for the Vertical Team) be due? · What administrative supports does the team need for the work to proceed (e.g., financial support for materials, equipment, professional development, release time)? · At what points might the team encounter obstacles, and how much time will the team need to resolve them? Such timeline planning is best done backward, proceeding from final expectations to initial hopes. In other words, knowing the desired end point (in terms of the skills and concepts students are expected to acquire) before designing the beginning and middle stages is critical to creating a well-articulated, effective and coherent curriculum. The AP Exams give at least implicit direction in this regard by gauging student performance. The team might consider these implicit levels as starting points in its discussions. Evaluating the AP Vertical Team To assess the impact and effectiveness of its efforts, an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art must select the methods it will use to measure the team’s progress toward its goals. Although student success on AP Exams might be one measure of an AP Vertical Team’s effectiveness, the team should collect additional data to determine the larger effect of its influence. In most cases, in order to truly understand the impact of the team, data will need to be collected over several years. This should not, however, prevent a team from examining important issues at the end of its first year of existence. The team should keep track of both successes and failures. In the short term, the team should base its criteria for evaluation on how well the members are working together. In the long term, the team needs to know how the changes it is implementing are affecting the progress of the students in the studio art program. Once established, the team’s goals can be used as benchmarks to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the curricular changes. These goals should form the core of an evaluation strategy that the team will use periodically and at the end of its work. This information can help the team determine if additional work needs to be done. The AP Vertical Team should quickly evaluate the effectiveness of its work at the conclusion of each meeting. This evaluation can be accomplished orally in the last few minutes of a meeting. If the team needs a more formal evaluation, it can develop a form to be completed and returned to the leadership before the beginning of the next meeting. This evaluation form might be based on a Likert scale of 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”) and contain evaluative statements such as the following: · All points of view were given respectful consideration. · I felt free and comfortable to express my opinions. · I had opportunities to express my ideas, even if I chose not to. · No one interrupted me or cut off my comments. · The discussion was constructive, in depth and moved the work forward. The evaluation form might also pose open-ended questions such as the following: · What was one thing that worked particularly well and why? · What was one thing that did not work well and why? · What was the most important accomplishment at this meeting? · What ideas (or topics) may require further discussions at subsequent meetings? The facilitator should report the findings at the next meeting and make necessary adjustments in order to foster close, collaborative working relationships. Along with assessing its procedural goals, the AP Vertical Team should assess its work using data collected from answers to questions that address curriculum, instruction and assessment. During the planning stages, the team should consider what types of evidence would answer the following questions for each type of stakeholder involved. Students · Have they experienced instruction that is more coherent in direction and more consistent in approach from teacher to teacher and level to level? · Have they experienced less repetitive instruction from one year to the next? · Have they experienced a more active learning environment in visual art classes? · Have they experienced a greater emphasis on the development of higher-order thinking and communication skills? · Have they improved their ability to learn in both individual and collaborative settings? · Have they sensed a greater commitment to their personal academic success from their visual art teachers? · Have they become more enthusiastic about visual art learning? · Have their knowledge and proficiencies of visual art developed or progressed more rapidly? · Are they more confident in their ability to apply visual art skills at an earlier level? · Do they demonstrate greater long-term retention of material from level to level? · Are they better prepared for their respective AP Exams? · Are they more proficient visual art learners? AP Studio art Teachers · Do they better understand how the curriculum flows from level to level? · Do they understand more clearly the expectations and standards of the AP Program in their discipline? · Are students arriving in their classes better prepared than before the creation of the AP Vertical Team? · Has curricular repetition been reduced in instruction? · Have standards for Studio Art been raised? · Have they aligned academic expectations and standards in their classrooms with an AP goal in mind? · Do they feel a greater sense of accomplishment, enthusiasm and ownership of the goals for AP courses in studio art? Administrators · Are more students participating in the AP program? · Are more students from traditionally underrepresented populations expressing an interest inAP courses through increased participation in the visual art program? · Are additional teachers interested in joining the AP Vertical Team? · Are AP Exam scores improving? Are scores on other standardized tests improving? · Have the AP Vertical Teams had an effect on student attendance and retention rates? · Have students embraced or explored more options for their postsecondary education? A simple template can be used to track evidence of accomplishment for each of the Vertical Team’s goals. The following table provides an example framework for collecting and summarizing evaluation data. The table outlines three typical Vertical Team goals. The “Indicators” column describes the outcomes that should emerge as the team meets these goals. For each goal, the “Questions” column lists a question that can be used on an evaluation form to elicit responses from participants. The “Evidence of Accomplishment” column provides sample team member responses that should help the AP Vertical Team decide whether goals are being met. Profiles of AP Vertical Teams for Studio Art World Languages and Cultures Cypress-Fairbanks (Cy-Fair) High School AP Vertical Team The Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District is the third largest school district in Texas, with 100,603 students enrolled for the 2008-09 school year (www.cfisd.net). Located northwest of the Houston area in Cypress, Cy-Fair High School opened its doors in 1942 as the original high school in the district, and is now home to approximately 3,200 students. Its world languages department’s 11 faculty members offer Spanish, French, German and Latin. The team concept is central to the district’s overall philosophy. CFISD expects its teachers to work with other educators on teams, both vertically and horizontally. Each teacher is expected to be someone who “cooperates with others for the group’s benefit, striving to solve problems by analyzing all pertinent data, listening to and valuing others’ viewpoints and actively seeking consensus.”4 This philosophy has been integrated into the very fabric of each teacher’s workday. The district provides ground rules, expectations and guidelines for all educators, and in exchange strives to provide the time and materials to execute the teams’ decisions. All world language teachers at Cy-Fair High School who teach the same subject (language and level) work on horizontal teams, spending a minimum of two hours per week planning together. A designated team leader, who is chosen by the administration using input from the department chair, leads each team. The team leader receives an additional planning period to execute ideas and decisions made by the team. In planning sessions, each team strives to use the philosophies underlying Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe5 to plan curriculum and assessment. (For more on this approach to curriculum design, see “Curriculum Design and Alignment” in Chapter 3. Also see Appendix D: Understanding by Design and Evidence-Centered Design.) In conjunction with this philosophy, each team guides its decision making by using the district’s scope and sequence (http://www.cfisd.net/dept2/curricu/lote/lote.htm) for the corresponding language and level. Representatives from each school in the district created the scope and sequence document to guide each horizontal and vertical team in its planning. The horizontal team’s basic ground rules establish that each teacher on the team will give the same tests, quizzes and extra credit opportunities on the same dates as other team members. The work of the horizontal team reinforces that of the vertical team because collaboration becomes a necessity. All teachers realize that their job is a group effort and the individual is only a contributor to the success of that effort. At Cy-Fair High School, the administration and district have made significant efforts to provide the time and materials for the teams to work together vertically. The most effective strategy for vertical teaming is for instructors to teach multiple levels within a language. For example, an instructor teaching six classes will teach two French 1 and four French 2 classes, and another instructor will teach two French 2 and four French 3 classes. This allows these two teachers to represent and advocate for the vertical team in the French 2 horizontal team planning sessions. Attempts are made to involve the same strategy whenever possible at the other levels and languages. Another effective vertical teaming strategy is the use of common planning periods. Cy-Fair’s administration has observed teachers working closely together on multiple teams, and it supports them by allowing everyone to collaborate during the same planning period. Doing so allows each team the time to plan horizontally (twice per week), and it also allows team members to work together and to discuss, brainstorm and collaborate on different projects that affect the vertical team. Finally, professional development is a priority. Every teacher at Cy-Fair has attended at least two of the Pre-AP workshops offered at the College Board’s AP Summer Institutes. This training is key to the team’s success by introducing team members to the skills, tasks and expectations that students will later experience in the AP course. Additionally, teachers interact with other educators and share ideas and support to realize the vision of a successful AP program. Saint Mary’s Hall K–12 AP Vertical Team Saint Mary’s Hall, a K–12 independent school in San Antonio, Texas, has developed an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art to build rigorous curricula. As a college-preparatory program, and a school that embraces the College Board’s philosophy of providing all students with the opportunity to enroll in a rigorous curriculum leading to and including AP and other college level courses, the team was formed to provide students with the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm necessary for success not only in AP French, AP Spanish and AP Latin courses, but also in advanced Japanese courses and world language study in a college or university setting. Moreover, the team views the AP courses in Studio Art as an outgrowth of the school’s own strategic goals — providing students with a quality education, preparing them for a global society, equipping them to think critically and to appreciate interdisciplinary challenges, and fostering in students a set of core ethical values, most notably respect, responsibility and appreciation of cultural differences. San Antonio is a city with Hispanic roots and a large Spanish-speaking community. The school believes that the rapid growth of the Spanish language and Pan-Hispanic cultures within the United States, and the increasingly close relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, create a clear need that demands a response from educators. Schools need to help students understand the rich, complex cultural heritage of not only the Pan-Hispanic people (whose language and cultures are more and more present in the everyday fabric of American life), but also the languages and cultures of the global societies that play a prominent role in international politics and the global economy. The study of Studio Art is crucial to students’ success in a multicultural and global society. In accordance with these beliefs, the school has established a strong program in Studio Art from the Montessori or kindergarten level through grade 12. Membership includes a team leader; the chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and ESL, who oversees the language curriculum from K-12; the head of college counseling, who also coordinates the entire school’s AP program; the assistant head of the school; the head of the curriculum counsel; the upper, middle and lower school division heads; all foreign language department faculty (French, Japanese, Latin and Spanish); the middle and upper school librarians; and a member of the lower school language arts and science faculty from each level, who works in collaboration with the foreign language faculty to develop curricula offerings and collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects and thematic educational units. Chairs from other departments participate in an advisory capacity as well as in reviewing andapproving long-term curricular changes and decisions. The team has encouraged, and the foreign language department and school administration have supported (with funding and substitute coverage), faculty team member participation in AP workshops, Summer Institutes and conferences. Additionally, the team encourages all AP teachers to participate in the AP Reading. In recent years, members of the team have served as AP Readers in French, Latin, Spanish Language and Spanish Literature, and one department member serves actively as an AP workshop consultant. In response to the aforementioned school and departmental goals, the AP Vertical Team has wholeheartedly embraced the inclusion of the word “culture” in course titles and the acknowledgement of its important role in the respective language courses along with the increased emphasis on a thematic approach to the course content. Following an evidence-centered, backward design approach to curriculum development (see Appendix D), and drawing on the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (discussed in Chapter 3), team members have revisited individual and programmatic course claims. Next, they have started to identify and list skills and content relevant to the six overarching themes and each theme’s set of recommended contexts. (For more information about these themes and recommended contexts, see “The Thematic Approach” in Chapter 4. Also see Appendix B: AP Curriculum Framework for Studio Art Courses.) Starting with just one of the themes, science and technology, the group is examining and sharing their observations about areas of thematic overlap in the vertical alignment, areas where they can develop horizontal alignment and inter- and intra-disciplinary learning with the science program and areas in need of more continuity, where recommended contexts may be further developed. Developing these contexts allows students to build upon their subject knowledge and skills and to engage in more advanced cognitive activities as they move from one level to the next. The science faculty and the school librarian have been especially helpful in suggesting, making available and obtaining resource materials to support the teaching of the science and technology theme. In addition to supporting the science curriculum, team members have also developed lessons in support of the programs in history and the social sciences and in art, for example, guest lecturing in global studies classes about Muslim Spain and the spread of humanism and early Renaissance ideas and thought in15th-century Spain. Using the claims and corresponding achievement level descriptions for each of the three modes of communication (Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational) and following the principles of evidence-centered curriculum design, faculty team members have also worked to identify which of the skills and activities listed are already — or might be, where developmentally appropriate — incorporated into earlier-level language courses. For example, team members have designed class activities for courses leading up to AP to develop the skills described under Achievement Levels 3 and 4, as well as corresponding assessments to demonstrate student attainment of these skills at the appropriate stages of vertical alignment. By focusing on claims and themes, rather than on trying to follow a prescribed curriculum with specific course content, faculty members have enthusiastically drawn upon their own strengths, experiences, interests and areas of expertise to explore the course themes and to strengthen their vertical and horizontal alignment. (For a complete list of the claims, achievement level descriptions and corresponding skills, see Appendix B: AP Curriculum Framework for Studio art Courses. For more information about Evidence-Centered Design, see Appendix D.) Similarly, team members have used the Course Description for AP Spanish Literature and the Latin and Spanish lists of required literary and critical terminology to identify the skills and knowledge that instructors already develop, or could develop, at earlier levels of the vertical alignment. In order to strengthen the horizontal alignment of the entire curriculum, the school has compiled a list of literary devices, their corresponding definitions and examples of their usage in English, French, Latin and Spanish texts. The list is distributed to all students in the ninth grade so that students, even in the beginning levels, learn to identify literary devices. This skill will serve them not only in the target language, but in English as well. Teaching students to identify literary devices such as metaphors, similes, alliteration and puns is an example strategy that can easily be adapted and integrated as early as the elementary school level or in beginning world language courses. Finally, Saint Mary’s Hall has given special attention to training new faculty members. In addition to facilitating their attendance at AP workshops and Summer Institutes, the school has members of the administration and the AP Vertical Team observe and evaluate all faculty members. In addition, all teachers are required to make several peer observations of more experienced faculty both within and outside their language, and across disciplines. Team members discuss the implementation of new textbooks, work collaboratively to develop and conduct student assessments, and actively share lesson plans and ideas. Foreign language faculty also sponsor the school’s Model United Nations program and language clubs, and collaborate in support of various community service projects.
Overview
This guide begins with a broad overview of the AP® Program, the AP-preparation model and the concept of AP Vertical Teams®. It includes a plan for beginning, developing and assessing the effectiveness of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. Subsequent chapters discuss important educational goals for AP Vertical Teams and present instructional strategies to assist teachers in helping students attain these goals. Nothing in this guide should be taken as prescriptive. There is no one right way to either create or implement an AP Vertical Team, or to help students succeed in visual art coursework. The same high regard for the teacher as an expert, which underlies the College Board’s AP Program, is also a fundamental premise of the AP-preparation model and of the AP Vertical Teams concept.
The AP® Program
With more than 30 courses in a wide variety of subject areas, AP provides willing and academically prepared high school students with the opportunity to study and learn at the college level. Each AP course is modeled after a comparable college course, and college and university faculty play a vital role in ensuring that AP courses align with college-level standards. AP courses culminate in a suite of college-level assessments that are developed and scored by college and university faculty as well as experienced AP teachers. AP Exams provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge they have acquired and the proficiencies they have developed. Participation in the AP Program offers students many benefits. They are introduced to a rich and rigorous college-level curriculum. Those who successfully complete an AP Exam in May have the opportunity to receive college credit or advanced placement, depending on the credit policy of the college they choose to attend. Numerous former AP students speak of an easier transition from high school to college due to the strong learning skills and habits of mind acquired in their AP courses.
As the number of students enrolling in AP courses grows each year, AP teachers find their classes populated by increasingly diverse learners with varying levels of preparation for the demands of an AP course. Many educators believe that more students could reap the benefits of participation in AP courses if they were introduced earlier to the learning skills and habits of mind (e.g., self-discipline, critical thinking) necessary for success in the AP Program.
The AP-Preparation Model
The AP-preparation model is a suite of Pre-AP® and AP professional development resources and services intended to:
· build rigorous curricula;
· promote access to AP courses for all students;
· introduce skills, concepts and assessment methods across curricula and instructional levels, in order to prepare all students for success when they take AP and other challenging courses; and
· strengthen curricula and increase the academic challenge for all students.
The purpose of the AP-preparation model is to equip all middle and high school teachers with the strategies necessary to engage their students in active, advanced learning. The goal of the AP preparation model is to ensure that all middle and high school students develop the skills, habits of mind and concepts needed for success in college. The AP-preparation model is grounded in the College Board’s policy on equitable access to AP courses.
Conceptually, the AP-preparation model is based on the following two important premises:
· the expectation that all students can perform at rigorous academic levels. This expectation should be reflected in curriculum and instruction throughout the school so all students are consistently being challenged to expand their knowledge and skills.
· the belief that we can best prepare every student for higher intellectual engagement by starting skill development and knowledge acquisition as early as possible. Addressed effectively, the middle and high school years can provide a powerful opportunity to help all students acquire the knowledge, concepts and skills needed to engage in a higher level of learning.
Unfortunately, many schools have developed gatekeeping or screening requirements that go far beyond what is appropriate to ensure that an individual student has had sufficient preparation to succeed in an AP course. The College Board strongly believes that all students should have access to preparation for AP and other challenging courses, and that pre-AP teaching strategies should be reflected in all courses taken by students prior to their enrollment in AP. The College Board discourages using “Pre-AP” in the title of a course and on a student’s transcript because there is no one fixed or mandated pre-AP curriculum that students must take to prepare for AP and other challenging course work. Rather than using “Pre-AP” in course titles, the College Board recommends the adoption of more comprehensive pre-AP programs that work across instructional levels and subject areas to prepare the entire diversity of a school’s student population for AP and college. We applaud the efforts of our many colleagues who enact that commitment in classrooms around the world.
Schools should also avoid rushing to install AP courses without simultaneously implementing a plan to prepare students and teachers in lower grades for the rigor of the program. Additionally, schools should carefully consider and secure the resources necessary to support the program before implementing AP courses.
The Importance of Equity and Access
All willing and academically prepared students deserve the opportunity to succeed in rigorous, college-level experiences and the advantages they offer. For this reason, the AP Program shares educators’ mission to connect traditionally underserved minority and low-income students to AP courses. AP encourages all educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their schools’ AP programs, and to ensure that their AP classes reflect the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of their student body.
The College Board encourages schools to make every effort to eliminate gatekeeping requirements for enrollment in AP courses. Because research has not established correlations between gatekeeping practices and actual success on an AP Exam, the College Board strongly discourages using the following as requirements for admission to an AP course:
· Grade point average
· Grade in a required prerequisite course
· Recommendation from a teacher
· AP teacher’s discretion
· Standardized test scores
· Course-specific entrance exam or essay
One of the silent barriers to equity and access can be a teacher who makes decisions for his or her students about who should be taking the AP Exam. To complete the AP experience, students need to sit for the exam, and all students enrolled in an AP course should be encouraged to take the corresponding exam. When they are initially expanding access to AP, some schools may experience an initial drop in the percentage of students scoring 3 or higher on the exam, but in the long term, the increase in the number of students served by the AP program is typically accompanied by an increase in the number of successful AP students.
Increasing Access and Success
By beginning as early as middle school to provide instruction in key knowledge and skill sets, teachers will find that students are better prepared for AP courses and more eager to continue being successful. If schools start by viewing all students as potential candidates for AP courses and building those students’ skills over time, the number of dedicated, hard working, college-bound students will grow. When all teachers have high expectations for all of their students, students are more likely to meet those expectations.
Building an AP program is a shared responsibility among teachers, counselors, administrators, students and parents. The College Board offers resources designed to help schools enhance and expand their AP programs and ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to participate in AP. On AP Central® (apcentral.collegeboard.com), teachers and administrators can find extensive information about AP courses and exams, sample syllabi, instructional materials and more. AP Potential™ (www.collegeboard.com/appotential) is a free, Web-based tool that schools can use to determine which students have the potential to succeed in AP courses. The College Board’s regional offices can help schools meet their professional development needs. (Visit collegeboard.com for details.)
Pre-AP professional development opportunities and the implementation of AP Vertical Teams can enhance educators’ ability to deliver content in a greater variety of ways to meet the needs of traditional as well as divergent learners. By meeting the learning-style needs of greater numbers of students, student success can improve. This results in a positive cycle of motivation in which success fuels a desire on the part of students to do even better. Over time, schools that develop Vertical Teams will see an increase in the number of students who are prepared to be successful in AP courses.
AP Vertical Teams®
Purposes of AP Vertical Teams
The College Board facilitates the AP-preparation model by promoting AP Vertical Teams® — teams of educators from different instructional levels in a given discipline who work cooperatively to develop and implement a vertically aligned program. The goal of AP vertical teaming is to help students acquire the skills and proficiencies they need to successfully participate in an academically stimulating and challenging AP program. An AP Vertical Team should aim to do the following:
· Facilitate the exchange of information among individuals who share a common purpose but who operate on different academic levels and who may hold very different organizational perspectives on instruction.
· Create a culture that connects people, in order to accomplish the common purpose of helping students learn and succeed.
· Establish instructional connections that create a seamless education for students.
· Facilitate a systemic view of the educational institutions and processes involved.
· Establish a process where individuals from different academic levels can relate to each other in a secure and meaningful manner in order to work toward the team’s goals.
Build professional relationships and find creative ways to continually improve education.
· These goals emphasize standards of teaching that:
· address individual students’ interests, strengths, experiences and needs;
· select and adapt curricula from a wide variety of sources;
· focus on student understanding and use of knowledge, ideas and inquiry processes;
· continuously assess student understanding;
· increase student responsibility for learning;
· support a classroom community with cooperation, shared responsibility and respect; and
work cooperatively with other teachers.
· Emerging from this approach are two overarching goals for AP Vertical Teams: first, to improve academic performance for all students in earlier grades by introducing skills and concepts needed for success in AP and other challenging courses, and second, to improve performance and participation in the AP Program. These overarching goals, in turn, are accomplished through two primary strategies, which serve as focal points of this guide:
· Curriculum alignment that spirals the development of AP skills and prerequisite content knowledge across grades, in anticipation of the AP course.
· Instructional practices embedded throughout the courses preceding AP that develop students’ knowledge and proficiencies, with eventual enrollment in an AP course in studio art as the goal.
Professionals who have participated in AP Vertical Teams have identified a variety of benefits. These teams
· provide a broader and more diverse population of students with greater access to challenging academic opportunities;
· encourage implementation of innovative instructional strategies;
· foster the development of a coordinated and collaborative educational community;
· promote a greater enthusiasm for teaching and learning; and
· empower teachers to realize and sustain meaningful curricular reform that ultimately leads to empowering students to become independent learners.
An AP Vertical Team can make the AP Program accessible to more students by creating a directed and focused approach through the collaboration of teachers at multiple instructional levels. Teachers who have already established AP Vertical Teams have been impressed with the impact of team planning on the overall curriculum. Students at each level are better prepared and show an overall rise in their proficiency level.
Guideposts for AP Vertical Teams
The following six topics are important foundational principles for successful AP Vertical Teams.
Standards.
Successful schools have a shared understanding of the skills and knowledge required to increase student achievement at all levels. Because the AP Program is a globally recognized example of educational excellence, high academic standards for student achievement can be measured by success in AP. Implementing the AP-preparation model across the curriculum can help raise instructional standards in all classes that precede AP. To further support this goal when aligning studio art curricula, the AP Vertical Team must consider national, state and local standards for visual arts study, as well as applicable standards from appropriate professional organizations.
Equity and Access.
When the work of AP Vertical Teams introduces students to essential academic skills in a timely, coordinated and systematic manner, a greater number of students have the opportunity to develop the skills and habits of mind necessary to succeed in and beyond the AP Program. AP courses cease to be isolated classes available only to the upper echelon of students and instead become academic opportunities for a broad population of students who are willing and able to accept the challenge of completing college-level work while in high school.
Instructional Innovation.
To develop the independent learning skills crucial to success in AP courses, teachers generally create and implement instructional strategies that develop higher-level analytical and communication skills as well as place greater responsibility on the students for their own academic progress. In addition, teachers involved with AP Vertical Teaming recognize that curricular creativity and ingenuity are essential to designing and delivering a vertically aligned curriculum.
Coordination.
By promoting frequent communication among educators about instructional standards and strategies, AP Vertical Teams foster the development of an educational community that is committed to improving student performance by creating a continuum of learning among classes and across instructional levels. This process helps reduce repetition and enables teachers to encourage students to apply their existing skills and knowledge to new and more challenging material. Increased coordination can also enable administrators, teachers and students to develop a clearer vision of how the curriculum unfolds, thus enhancing their ability to understand its goals.
Collaboration.
An AP Vertical Team’s collaborative nature and its connection to the AP Program’s standards and expectations improve educators’ chances of realizing and sustaining meaningful curriculum reform. No longer is one individual trying to move a mountain. Rather, a concerted effort among numerous individuals can foster curriculum reform. AP Vertical Teams, regardless of the discipline, encourage the growth of critical thinking skills and empower students to become independent learners who possess the skills to play an active role in, and take significant responsibility for, their own education.
Enthusiasm.
A more stimulating, challenging, coordinated and relevant curriculum, which is aimed at giving students the tools and knowledge to succeed in present course work and future endeavors, excites students about learning. The clearer sense of purpose and community that teachers experience as members of an AP Vertical Team also promotes greater enthusiasm for teaching and learning.
Chapter 2:
AP Vertical Team Development
Creating an AP Vertical Team Community for Studio Art
AP Vertical Teams vary in size, composition and nature of participation. Schools setting out to create an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art face two initial questions: Who should be involved? How large should the team be? The best way to begin is to take an inventory of colleagues who will most likely support the improvement of studio art programs. Many team
construction models exist; the following chart outlines a number of possibilities for the scale and composition of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art, as well as the benefits and drawbacks each option can offer.
Examples of Scale and Composition Options for AP Vertical Teams for
Studio Art
Scale of AP Vertical
The most effective teams are the most inclusive. However, the team’s size should enable efficiency and coherence. Therefore, team initiators need to consider the following questions:
· Should the team focus on just one level of instruction at a time, or on all levels at once through a common set of skills?
· Who, for reasons of leadership and expertise, must be on the team?
· What combination of personnel from different schools a •nd instructional levels is best?
· Should the team include all visual arts teachers at all instructional levels?
· Which colleagues should attend meetings on an occasional basis as needed?
· How large is too large? If the full team is large, can smaller working groups be created within it?
AP Vertical Teams often consist of seven to twelve members. To increase effectiveness, it is important that the team include at least one member from each instructional level. These team members are responsible for sharing information with colleagues at the appropriate instructional level.
In addition to teachers, AP Vertical Teams frequently include district administrators, principals, curriculum coordinators and school counselors. The roles these individuals play in scheduling, budgeting and making curricular decisions make them beneficial to the team’s success. Since college and universities ultimately award AP credits, a college- or university-level instructor can be a valuable asset to an AP Vertical Team.
Engaging Stakeholders and Identifying Roles
Engaging the different stakeholders in the vertical teaming effort requires acknowledging why each of them is important, and showing them why and how their participation will be valuable to them, to their schools and, ultimately, to the students. The following sections describe in more detail some elements to consider when seeking support and participation from the various constituencies of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art.
Studio Art Studio art
This group will be the most affected by the work of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. Developing a clearly articulated, vertically aligned and well-implemented program will benefit both these teachers and their students.
An AP Vertical Team can offer visual art instructors the following benefits:
· A detailed understanding of and thoughtfully articulated plan for more efficient student acquisition of visual art proficiencies
· Collaborative sharing of best practices that help students increase their knowledge, proficiency and learning strategies
· Opportunities for professional growth and sharing of instructional strategies
· The capacity to anticipate the skill levels of the students coming into their classes from the previous grade or instructional level
· A greater understanding of how their own instruction fits into the overall studio art program
· Support from colleagues regarding standards and pedagogy
To be most effective, the AP Vertical Team should include teachers from all relevant grade levels: high school and middle school studio art teachers and elementary school teachers. Middle school and elementary school teachers are a vital part of the team, and special consideration should be given to their involvement. To offer them more convenient access to meetings, some meetings should be held in the middle or elementary school building. All teachers should be encouraged to present the ideas, approaches and materials that have proven most successful in their teaching.
School districts with no direct feeder patterns can work at the district level to form AP Vertical Teams for Studio Art that consist of teachers of a specific language from high schools and middle schools and, if possible, elementary schools. They may also wish to organize horizontal teams (comprised of teachers of the same course or instructional level across schools) to improve the consistency of preparation among students who come from different schools or have different teachers.
Committed educators from grades, buildings or districts that currently do not offer instruction in Studio Art can also be included, particularly if they are considering the introduction of various visual art courses. This would help ensure an articulated visual art program throughout a student’s precollegiate school experience.
Administrators
Creating a cohesive and productive AP Vertical Team for Studio Art requires support from both district- and school-level administrators. Administrative support is vital not only for the creation and success of the team itself, but also for the implementation of plans developed by the team. As experienced team builders, motivators and leaders of change, trustees, superintendents, principals, curriculum coordinators and deans should know that they play the following critical roles in coordinating efforts to benefit the AP Vertical Team:
· As the leaders and public faces of their schools, they can communicate the mission and work of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art to the district administration, school board, faculty, parents and other community members.
· As active participants, they can help the AP Vertical Team shape its goals and support its vision.
· As program evaluators, they can examine the AP Vertical Team’s impact on student learning and achievement.
· As facilitators, they can build the AP Vertical Team’s work into a schoolwide or districtwide strategic plan.
· As coordinators, they can build bridges between the work of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art and that of AP Vertical Teams in other subject areas.
· Administrators can demonstrate their commitment to the AP Vertical Team in a number of ways. They can develop school policies that encourage student participation in rigorous learning, which increases the probability that more students will participate in the AP program. Administrators can also support ongoing professional development, where AP Vertical Team members have an opportunity to meet with colleagues from other schools and discuss such topics as the standards and expectations of the AP Program, strategies for motivating and supporting students, and innovative instructional strategies. They can create a safe environment for learning and improvement, where teachers are encouraged to think innovatively, implement new ideas and grow professionally. Additionally, administrators can help the team with a variety of logistical matters, which include:
· identifying individuals who can serve as members of the AP Vertical Team;
· providing access to existing academic data or setting up systems to collect additional relevant data;
· facilitating communication among administrators at the schools represented by theAP Vertical Team and among the team members at multiple campuses;
· coordinating meetings that involve educators from multiple campuses;
· scheduling blocks of time for the AP Vertical Team to meet regularly over an extended timeperiod;
· providing meeting rooms, supplies, resources and technical support;
· providing substitute teachers and/or classroom coverage for AP Vertical Team members to meet during the academic day;
· facilitating AP Vertical Team meetings on in-service days or during in-service time; and
· providing financial resources, such as professional development funds, for AP Vertical Team members to meet outside of the academic day (e.g., during weekends, holidays, vacations, before or after school).
For administrators to promote the team’s goals, they must be kept informed about its work, no matter how involved they may be in the team.
AP Coordinators
A school’s AP Coordinator may be an administrator, a school counselor or a teacher who does not teach an AP class. Since they have the primary responsibility for organizing an AP program and the administration of the exams, AP Coordinators have a clear vision of the factors that might lead to the success of the program. Because they serve as a link to administrators, teachers, parents and students,
AP Coordinators can help all stakeholders understand the advantages of taking advanced visual art classes by presenting an overview of the AP Program along with strategies to increase student achievement. They can explain that the skills and knowledge essential to student success at the AP level requires that a clearly defined, vertically aligned program be implemented at each instructional level. Therefore, it is crucial that AP Coordinators be members of the Vertical Team.
School Counselors
School counselors are an important conduit to students and their parents. Their role as advisers on course selection and postsecondary opportunities makes their support of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art of key importance. Counselors can promote the view that it is in a student’s best interest to take visual art courses, the goals of which are rigorous but well defined by the local school district. They can also stress the importance of a vertically aligned approach to visual art study. Furthermore, school counselors can play a valuable role in working with the team to allay student, parent or administrator concerns about the development of a challenging curriculum for studio art. The AP Vertical Team can draw on a counselor’s insight into how best to convince students and parents of the benefits of working toward AP-level standards. In order to secure their commitment, school counselors should be made aware of the following reasons for their participation:
· They can provide important input in the development of a curriculum that will meet the needs of the students they are advising.
· Their support and their ability to communicate positively and clearly to students and parents will be essential to setting and achieving goals for student inclusion.
· They will be key players in assuaging initial fears that advanced visual art study may be too challenging for some students.
· They can help the team develop strategies for long-term communication about curriculum goals, changes and strategies.
Parents
Recent studies have shown that the success of a child’s education depends upon parental involvement. It is therefore vital to inform parents of the benefits of a well-articulated curriculum. Since the curriculum today may be more rigorous (though at the same time more student-friendly) than the curricula parents experienced when they were in school, some parents need encouragement to endorse a curriculum that embraces the ambitious goals of an AP program. Furthermore, since the curriculum developed by an AP Vertical Team almost always results in more challenging content coupled with more sophisticated assignments for students, some parents may become concerned that their children, who may initially struggle with the new curriculum, are being asked to engage in course work that is too difficult. Occasionally, their immediate reaction is to request that teachers simplify assignments or be less demanding in their evaluations of assignments. Parents should be encouraged to discuss their concerns with teachers, but they should also be reassured that some academic struggle is to be expected and is, in fact, at the core of the learning process.
The AP Vertical Team for Studio Art can communicate its goals to parents through the local PTA or through “AP nights” that present the benefits of the AP Program. Even though students do not take AP courses until high school, they may need to begin planning for that possibility before they leave middle school; thus, it is important for parents and students to begin to understand the AP Program as early as possible. Parents also need to know that they play an important role in the success of the program.
· Parents can help schools secure funding, publicly support teachers and serve as advocates with the local board of education.
· Parental support of the AP Vertical Team’s work can help motivate students to excel in visual art coursework. If parents are particularly interested in visual art or proficient in visual art skills, they can become part of the team. Once identified and encouraged to participate, these parents can communicate to others how AP Vertical Teams and sustained, sequenced programs of visual art study will enhance a child’s future success in academics or the workplace.
Students
Because their academic success is the ultimate goal of the process, students are key stakeholders in AP vertical teaming. Based on their performance on rigorous AP Exams, students can earn college credit, advanced placement or both. Thus, students should be introduced early on and in a consistent fashion to the essential concepts, skills and habits of mind required for success in AP and college courses.
Vertical teaming can expand access to academic opportunities for a broader range of students. All students can perform at rigorous academic levels if properly supported. Curriculum and instruction at every level should reflect this expectation so that all students are consistently challenged to expand their knowledge and language proficiencies as they progress from one grade to the next. To prepare every student for higher intellectual engagement, the development of key skills and the acquisition of core knowledge has to begin as early as possible and progress through instructional levels in a coordinated manner. Students need to know that their active participation in an AP Vertical Team program can provide them with opportunities to:
· experience less repetitive instruction from one year to the next;
· be part of a more active learning environment;
· experience a greater emphasis on the development of higher-order thinking and communication skills; and
· take a greater responsibility for their own academic progress.
Higher Education Faculty
Involving higher education faculty in AP Vertical Teams has reciprocal benefits. The appeal for college and university faculty is direct involvement in an organized curricular program that prepares students for success in studio art studio art courses when they reach college. An AP Vertical Team will benefit from access to an expert who not only has information about the knowledge and skills necessary for student success at the college level, but who also can share information about the college’s policy on credit or placement for AP Exam grades. In addition, higher education faculty who are participating in AP Vertical Teams acquire first-hand knowledge of the academic rigor of an AP course, which can be used to inform university or college decisions on whether to create or modify their AP credit or placement policies.
State Departments of Education
State departments of education can assist schools by providing information and support as an AP Vertical Team is formed. They may also know of grant programs to which schools and districts can apply for funding to begin vertical teaming efforts. State departments of education can also assist Vertical Teams with professional development that involves meeting state standards, using student data and improving student achievement.
Professional Organizations
Professional organizations can be valuable sources of expertise and may be included as stakeholders in developing an AP Vertical Team. Foundations that raise funds to assist independent and public schools can provide funds for AP vertical teaming. State, regional and national teacher associations often have committees on professional development that can provide expertise and sometimes suggest resources or offer funding and guidance during Vertical Team formation.
Teacher Unions
Teacher unions represent many stakeholders in education, and can aid in identifying educational resources as well as possible funding to support the AP Vertical Team. Teacher unions often include one or more elected officers who work on designing union-supported professional development efforts and also work with the school district to ensure that professional development conforms to contractual expectations for the teachers. These officers may assist with professional development for the AP Vertical Team by providing expertise and guidance, training, financial support for training and union materials to assist with training of Vertical Team members. Teacher unions can also be important vehicles for recruiting teachers who are interested in becoming a part of the Vertical Team.
Meeting Challenges and Addressing Special Circumstances
Building an inclusive AP Vertical Team for Studio Art can involve a number of challenges, depending on the special circumstances of a program, school or district. The leaders and potential team members should consider the following issues when deciding whom to engage.
Single Schools and Independent Schools
Teachers in an independent school or in a school not connected to others in a district have a unique opportunity to develop a highly articulated curriculum. Frequently, the studio art departments in these schools are small and cohesive; what one teacher does directly affects the classrooms of colleagues. In this situation, it is particularly important for the entire department to meet as an AP Vertical Team. Although independent schools have considerable freedom to deliver instruction and make curriculum decisions based on individual teacher preferences, the advantages of articulating a coherent overall program are enormous. In cases where teachers are physically separated, a “virtual” Vertical Team can be created using telecommunication technology.
Teachers in Smaller Programs
A one- or two-person department of Studio Art can add value to an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art. They might, for example, become members of an AP Vertical Team, or a specific visual art team, that is districtwide, countywide or even statewide. They will often bring a fresh, unexpected or enlightening point of view to such endeavors. In the case where there is only one visual art teacher in an entire school district, this teacher can gain and share much by working with other visual art teachers in the school or district. Team members can share strategies and classroom activities and adapt them to suit the needs of both the learners and the subject being studied at all levels. Being part of an AP Vertical Team can be especially valuable to these teachers because it provides a way for professional sharing and support.
Faculty Turnover
As potential new faculty members are interviewed, the leadership of the team should acquaint candidates with the goals and work of the AP Vertical Team. In addition, new faculty members should be encouraged to join the team, as it provides an excellent means for developing the collegial relationships necessary for success in the local teaching community.
Reluctant Colleagues
Some colleagues may not believe in the vision of the AP Vertical Team. Nevertheless, these people should be kept informed of the team’s work and should be encouraged to participate in that work. They should be given every opportunity to collaborate with the Vertical Team members and to take part in curricular and methodological initiatives. Because the team’s work will affect how and what is taught, it is to their advantage to participate — and, more importantly, it is to their students’ advantage.
Other Challenges
An AP Vertical Team may be new in a school district and, therefore, not well understood by all the groups that have a stake in its success. In district publications, parent meetings and other forums, the AP Vertical Team can publicize the ways in which it offers all students an opportunity to benefit from advanced coursework. To communicate its vision, the team might consider making a presentation to the school community about successful innovations in visual art study and AP education. Stakeholders may be willing to support changes if they know that the work of AP Vertical Teams has been successful in other places or other subject areas. Thus, the team may wish to invite someone from another demographically comparable school system — for instance, a district or regional specialist in Studio Art or a representative from another AP Vertical Team — to join the presentation.
In all cases, the rationale for establishing an AP Vertical Team must focus on what happens to students as they study visual art. Educators will find it much easier to adjust teaching practices and methods if they are doing so in concert with others who believe that a coherent curriculum will positively affect a student’s attitude toward achievement in their classrooms. Hesitant individuals will need reassurance that they will not be expected to make changes overnight, or without collegial and professional support.
AP Vertical Team Groundwork
Developing an Overarching Educational Philosophy
To bring coherence to the curricular changes developed by the AP Vertical Team, the members must share an overarching teaching philosophy. All members will be involved in defining the theoretical basis for the curriculum that the team is charged with developing. This will necessitate considerable in-depth discussions, because the decisions made will produce the strength of the foundation upon which the team will construct its curriculum. Instead of agreeing on any existing philosophy, AP Vertical Team members should themselves develop a sharedphilosophy with all members involved in the decision making.
To develop a coherent, clearly articulated, vertically aligned studio art curriculum, each teacher must be able to retain a personal teachingstylewhile following the “philosophy” agreed upon by the AP Vertical Team during its deliberations. It is therefore important to distinguish between “philosophy” and “style.” For this purpose, “philosophy” relates to the approach or methodology by which one teaches. The AP Vertical Team will base its curriculum development upon this philosophy.
The teaching “style,” on the other hand, is the method, developed according to an individual’s particular tastes and imagination, by which a teacher applies the teaching philosophy advocated by the AP Vertical Team. In other words, while the overarching curricular philosophy needs to be followed, the application of a teaching style allows individual teachers to engage their own personalities in bringing the curriculum to life in the classroom.
Putting Philosophy Into Practice
Courses in Studio Art offer students the opportunity to explore and appreciate the richness and complexity of human societies, to grapple with new ideas and divergent interpretations and to create their own understanding of the human experience. These courses encourage students to become independent learners and offer them the chance to sharpen their analytical and communication skills as they prepare for a life filled with questions, challenges and opportunities.
Given these benefits, how can visual art educators increase the number of students who participate and succeed in AP courses in Studio Art? How do we create a path of inclusion rather than exclusion, an open door rather than a narrow pipeline?
Chapter 4 of this guide is devoted to presenting specific instructional strategies designed to help students improve their proficiency in the target language and their knowledge of target cultures, while also preparing them for success in AP courses. The effectiveness of these strategies is enhanced in a context that recognizes language education as an integrated process of instructional strategies and assessment.
Creating a curriculum that builds upon this integrated approach is instrumental to promoting student success in AP courses in Studio Art. Students frequently become proficient at certain discrete tasks, but are unable to see the connection between these tasks or succeed in using several of the tasks to complete more complex assignments. The integrated process encourages teachers to create and explicitly discuss the connections between different teaching strategies and between these teaching strategies and assessment techniques. The development of particular skills associated with visual art proficiency can serve to prepare students effectively for the rigor of AP course work.
Creating, developing and sustaining an AP Vertical Team is essential to increasing student access to and success in the AP Program. Teachers on an AP Vertical Team have the opportunity to raise overall standards and enhance student preparation through better curriculum coordination and pedagogical innovation. By working together, team members can create an educational process that prepares students to become independent learners. By modeling practical teaching strategies, this guide is designed to help members of an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art work together to help students achieve these goals across classes and from one instructional level to the next.
AP Vertical Team Leadership Development
A strong AP Vertical Team has a clear vision of the goals and developmental direction of the team, and effective leadership is crucial to the realization of those goals. A Vertical Team will benefit from structured leadership that includes the following two roles.
Vertical Team Facilitator
A crucial member of any AP Vertical Team will be the facilitator. Ideally, the facilitator should possess a broad view of the studio art curriculum and have experience at both middle and high school levels. For teams without such an individual, the facilitator might be any member of the team who has demonstrated leadership ability. The team might recruit a facilitator from outside
its school system, such as a curriculum specialist or coordinator from another district, who is experienced in working with teachers from various levels. The team may also choose to have members take turns as the facilitator; if so, the facilitator(s) might seek professional development training that focuses on the coordination of group processes.
Effective facilitation employs the team members’ diverse abilities to solve problems and make decisions. Regardless of who becomes the facilitator, he or she must be prepared to lead the team by:
· arranging team meetings, setting agendas and adhering to the schedule;
· gathering data and procuring materials needed for discussion at meetings;
· coordinating discussions and keeping the group focused;
· ensuring that the minutes of meetings are recorded, preserved and distributed promptly;
· following through on goals and resolutions; and
· working with administrators to continue and expand the necessary support.
Facilitators should also create an atmosphere of trust, respect, candor and fairness by:
· listening to feedback and answering questions clearly;
· providing constructive criticism and addressing problems as needed; and
· giving praise and recognition.
Vertical Team Secretary
Another key member of the AP Vertical Team is the secretary or recorder. One person may assume this role, or team members might rotate the responsibility for keeping detailed notes of the meetings and distributing them promptly. The AP Vertical Team can also decide who will keep the group’s long-term records, especially data that supports the team’s progress.
Because all AP Vertical Team members should be potential leaders, the work of the team should encourage the development of certain leadership skills among all involved. To be an effective member of the team, a participant needs to develop attitudes and behaviors based on respect for the needs of others. For example, because team members should not feel pressured to acquiesce to behaviors or ideas with which they do not agree, all members need to develop habits of positive criticism.
Action Plan for AP Vertical Team Implementation
Whatever the size or composition of the AP Vertical Team for Studio Art, all members should work collaboratively to achieve the team’s goals by engaging in the following general activities.
· Establish a vision and common purpose that support dedication to high standards and expectations for all students.
· Implement an inclusive, rather than an exclusive, policy of student access to rigorous instruction.
· Provide time and resources for frequent planning and collaboration among Vertical Team members to discuss curriculum content and skills, exchange ideas and teaching strategies, design classroom assessment measures, provide a support network and evaluate the program’s effectiveness.
· Research and implement instructional methodologies that provoke higher levels of thinking and emphasize greater student responsibility for learning.
· Enable initial and ongoing professional development to implement strategies for motivating and supporting students, and to discuss innovative teaching techniques.
· Schedule frequent opportunities to communicate the program’s goals and progress with parents, students, faculty, community members and district leaders.
· Designate at both the school and district levels a system of leadership and accountability to implement and support the program.
The importance of creating an action plan cannot be overstated. Designing a clear set of directives from the outset will prove invaluable to facilitating the organized development and work of the AP Vertical Team. The action plan should address topics such as:
· the AP Vertical Team’s goals;
· the time frame for implementing the Vertical Team and other initiatives designed to prepare students for success in AP courses;
· the schedule of meetings;
· a prioritized list of deliverables or milestones;
· designations of responsibility for meeting specific goals or milestones;
· due dates for all goals or milestones; and
· the means of evaluating the team’s success in meeting those goals.
Establishing Ground Rules
During the first meeting, the team should establish fundamental guidelines or procedures for that meeting and for all following meetings. Establish ground rules that will make deliberations more effective and with which all participants are comfortable. Establish a method for evaluating each meeting’s progress. Determine the next meeting date, set the goals for that meeting and create a tentative meeting schedule for the semester or year.
Each member of the AP Vertical Team is critical to the success of the entire studio art program, and each member’s contribution must be valued. The first meeting might begin with activities that allow members to get to know one another. This is not the meeting to tackle sensitive issues. Before an AP Vertical Team can successfully continue its discussions about the program, the members of the team must feel comfortable expressing their opinions, beliefs, hopes, concerns and insecurities. This requires a high level of trust among team members, and it may take time and effort to develop that trust.
In her book 100 Ways to Build Teams, Carol Scearce includes the following comments on teams and team building:
· The most common cause of team failure is the inability of team members to get along.
· People often think trust is automatically built into their team because they are committed and have good will.
· Ignoring the mechanics of teamwork will undoubtedly lead to trouble.
· Team guidelines usually prevent misunderstandings and disagreements.
· In order for feedback to be effective, members must trust each other.
· In a strong team, nothing is too trivial to celebrate.3
The first meeting should end with a quick evaluation of the meeting’s work, emphasizing what has been accomplished. This can be important for keeping on task and for establishing a tone of candor. Taking even five minutes at the end of a meeting to invite comments on the process will be invaluable for establishing an ongoing and effective dialogue during subsequent meetings. Allowing for confidential written feedback on the process may provide the AP Vertical Team leadership with the most valuable and candid insights at the beginning, when confidence and trust have yet to be established.
Setting Goals
Reaching consensus on a set of clearly articulated goals is one of the AP Vertical Team’s first and most crucial tasks. However, the team should recognize that some of its initial goals will probably shift and evolve as the work progresses, even while the main goal — a well-articulated program that addresses student needs from the novice level through the AP Exam — remains consistent. For example, the AP Vertical Team might encounter some changes or obstacles that lie outside the control of the team itself. The team should make every effort to determine whether they might still have some way of affecting those changes or obstacles. When this is not possible, the team should carefully consider how it could adapt to them.
AP Vertical Team members should continuously consider the following questions while engaging in this process:
· Do we need to restate our goals?
· Do we have any additional goals?
· Are there any new strategies that will help us achieve our goals?
· Is there anything that we need to learn more about?
The following goal-setting template presents one option for organizing the team’s thinking on this
subject.
Once the team establishes its goals, it should draw up an action plan to clearly describe how it plans to achieve each goal. First, the team must decide what will constitute adequate evidence that a goal has been attained. Then, the team must determine the actions necessary to generate this evidence. After determining the appropriate actions, the team must designate the person or persons responsible for engaging in those actions and producing the necessary evidence. Finally, the team must set a time frame or deadline for completing those tasks. The template that follows is one example of how this action plan might be documented.
Team leaders should emphasize from the outset that the work of an AP Vertical Team is an ongoing task, and that the “final” product might well be years away from the starting point.
Establishing a Timeline
The AP Vertical Team should establish a basic timeline to guide the team’s work and to serve as a working plan that can be freely revised as the work unfolds. Matters to consider in establishing points on the timeline may include the following:
· What reports (e.g., Vertical Team progress reports for faculty, parents or district administrators) or other documents will be required?
· When will various sections of the report or other documents be due?
· When will final materials (e.g., summative or year-end progress reports for the Vertical Team) be due?
· What administrative supports does the team need for the work to proceed (e.g., financial support for materials, equipment, professional development, release time)?
· At what points might the team encounter obstacles, and how much time will the team need to resolve them?
Such timeline planning is best done backward, proceeding from final expectations to initial hopes. In other words, knowing the desired end point (in terms of the skills and concepts students are expected to acquire) before designing the beginning and middle stages is critical to creating a well-articulated, effective and coherent curriculum. The AP Exams give at least implicit direction in this regard by gauging student performance. The team might consider these implicit levels as starting points in its discussions.
Evaluating the AP Vertical Team
To assess the impact and effectiveness of its efforts, an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art must select the methods it will use to measure the team’s progress toward its goals. Although student success on AP Exams might be one measure of an AP Vertical Team’s effectiveness, the team
should collect additional data to determine the larger effect of its influence. In most cases, in order to truly understand the impact of the team, data will need to be collected over several years. This should not, however, prevent a team from examining important issues at the end of its first year of existence. The team should keep track of both successes and failures. In the short term, the team should base its criteria for evaluation on how well the members are working together. In the long term, the team needs to know how the changes it is implementing are affecting the progress of the students in the studio art program. Once established, the team’s goals can be used as benchmarks to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the curricular changes. These goals should form the core of an evaluation strategy that the team will use periodically and at the end of its work. This information can help the team determine if additional work needs to be done.
The AP Vertical Team should quickly evaluate the effectiveness of its work at the conclusion of each meeting. This evaluation can be accomplished orally in the last few minutes of a meeting. If the team needs a more formal evaluation, it can develop a form to be completed and returned to the leadership before the beginning of the next meeting. This evaluation form might be based on a Likert scale of 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”) and contain evaluative statements such as the following:
· All points of view were given respectful consideration.
· I felt free and comfortable to express my opinions.
· I had opportunities to express my ideas, even if I chose not to.
· No one interrupted me or cut off my comments.
· The discussion was constructive, in depth and moved the work forward.
The evaluation form might also pose open-ended questions such as the following:
· What was one thing that worked particularly well and why?
· What was one thing that did not work well and why?
· What was the most important accomplishment at this meeting?
· What ideas (or topics) may require further discussions at subsequent meetings?
The facilitator should report the findings at the next meeting and make necessary adjustments in order to foster close, collaborative working relationships.
Along with assessing its procedural goals, the AP Vertical Team should assess its work using data collected from answers to questions that address curriculum, instruction and assessment. During the planning stages, the team should consider what types of evidence would answer the following questions for each type of stakeholder involved.
Students
· Have they experienced instruction that is more coherent in direction and more consistent in approach from teacher to teacher and level to level?
· Have they experienced less repetitive instruction from one year to the next?
· Have they experienced a more active learning environment in visual art classes?
· Have they experienced a greater emphasis on the development of higher-order thinking and communication skills?
· Have they improved their ability to learn in both individual and collaborative settings?
· Have they sensed a greater commitment to their personal academic success from their visual art teachers?
· Have they become more enthusiastic about visual art learning?
· Have their knowledge and proficiencies of visual art developed or progressed more rapidly?
· Are they more confident in their ability to apply visual art skills at an earlier level?
· Do they demonstrate greater long-term retention of material from level to level?
· Are they better prepared for their respective AP Exams?
· Are they more proficient visual art learners?
AP Studio art Teachers
· Do they better understand how the curriculum flows from level to level?
· Do they understand more clearly the expectations and standards of the AP Program in their discipline?
· Are students arriving in their classes better prepared than before the creation of the AP Vertical Team?
· Has curricular repetition been reduced in instruction?
· Have standards for Studio Art been raised?
· Have they aligned academic expectations and standards in their classrooms with an AP goal in mind?
· Do they feel a greater sense of accomplishment, enthusiasm and ownership of the goals for AP courses in studio art?
Administrators
· Are more students participating in the AP program?
· Are more students from traditionally underrepresented populations expressing an interest inAP courses through increased participation in the visual art program?
· Are additional teachers interested in joining the AP Vertical Team?
· Are AP Exam scores improving? Are scores on other standardized tests improving?
· Have the AP Vertical Teams had an effect on student attendance and retention rates?
· Have students embraced or explored more options for their postsecondary education?
A simple template can be used to track evidence of accomplishment for each of the Vertical Team’s goals.
The following table provides an example framework for collecting and summarizing evaluation data. The table outlines three typical Vertical Team goals. The “Indicators” column describes the outcomes that should emerge as the team meets these goals. For each goal, the “Questions” column lists a question that can be used on an evaluation form to elicit responses from participants. The “Evidence of Accomplishment” column provides sample team member responses that should help the AP Vertical Team decide whether goals are being met.
Profiles of AP Vertical Teams for Studio Art World Languages
and Cultures
Cypress-Fairbanks (Cy-Fair) High School AP Vertical Team
The Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District is the third largest school district in Texas, with 100,603 students enrolled for the 2008-09 school year (www.cfisd.net). Located northwest of the Houston area in Cypress, Cy-Fair High School opened its doors in 1942 as the original high school in the district, and is now home to approximately 3,200 students. Its world languages department’s 11 faculty members offer Spanish, French, German and Latin.
The team concept is central to the district’s overall philosophy. CFISD expects its teachers to work with other educators on teams, both vertically and horizontally. Each teacher is expected to be someone who “cooperates with others for the group’s benefit, striving to solve problems by analyzing all pertinent data, listening to and valuing others’ viewpoints and actively seeking consensus.”4 This philosophy has been integrated into the very fabric of each teacher’s workday. The district provides ground rules, expectations and guidelines for all educators, and in exchange strives to provide the time and materials to execute the teams’ decisions.
All world language teachers at Cy-Fair High School who teach the same subject (language and level) work on horizontal teams, spending a minimum of two hours per week planning together. A designated team leader, who is chosen by the administration using input from the department chair, leads each team. The team leader receives an additional planning period to execute ideas and decisions made by the team. In planning sessions, each team strives to use the philosophies underlying Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe5 to plan curriculum and assessment. (For more on this approach to curriculum design, see “Curriculum Design and Alignment” in Chapter 3. Also see Appendix D: Understanding by Design and Evidence-Centered Design.) In conjunction with this philosophy, each team guides its decision making by using the district’s scope and sequence (http://www.cfisd.net/dept2/curricu/lote/lote.htm) for the corresponding language and level. Representatives from each school in the district created the scope and sequence document to guide each horizontal and vertical team in its planning. The horizontal team’s basic ground rules establish that each teacher on the team will give the same tests, quizzes and extra credit opportunities on the same dates as other team members.
The work of the horizontal team reinforces that of the vertical team because collaboration becomes a necessity. All teachers realize that their job is a group effort and the individual is only a contributor to the success of that effort. At Cy-Fair High School, the administration and district have made significant efforts to provide the time and materials for the teams to work together vertically. The most effective strategy for vertical teaming is for instructors to teach multiple levels within a language. For example, an instructor teaching six classes will teach two French 1 and four French 2 classes, and another instructor will teach two French 2 and four French 3 classes. This allows these two teachers to represent and advocate for the vertical team in the French 2 horizontal team planning sessions. Attempts are made to involve the same strategy whenever possible at the other levels and languages.
Another effective vertical teaming strategy is the use of common planning periods. Cy-Fair’s administration has observed teachers working closely together on multiple teams, and it supports them by allowing everyone to collaborate during the same planning period. Doing so allows each team the time to plan horizontally (twice per week), and it also allows team members to work together and to discuss, brainstorm and collaborate on different projects that affect the vertical team.
Finally, professional development is a priority. Every teacher at Cy-Fair has attended at least two of the Pre-AP workshops offered at the College Board’s AP Summer Institutes. This training is key to the team’s success by introducing team members to the skills, tasks and expectations that students will later experience in the AP course. Additionally, teachers interact with other educators and share ideas and support to realize the vision of a successful AP program.
Saint Mary’s Hall K–12 AP Vertical Team
Saint Mary’s Hall, a K–12 independent school in San Antonio, Texas, has developed an AP Vertical Team for Studio Art to build rigorous curricula. As a college-preparatory program, and a school that embraces the College Board’s philosophy of providing all students with the opportunity to enroll in a rigorous curriculum leading to and including AP and other college level courses, the team was formed to provide students with the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm necessary for success not only in AP French, AP Spanish and AP Latin courses, but also in advanced Japanese courses and world language study in a college or university setting. Moreover, the team views the AP courses in Studio Art as an outgrowth of the school’s own strategic goals — providing students with a quality education, preparing them for a global society, equipping them to think critically and to appreciate interdisciplinary challenges, and fostering in students a set of core ethical values, most notably respect, responsibility and appreciation of cultural differences.
San Antonio is a city with Hispanic roots and a large Spanish-speaking community. The school believes that the rapid growth of the Spanish language and Pan-Hispanic cultures within the United States, and the increasingly close relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, create a clear need that demands a response from educators. Schools need to help students understand the rich, complex cultural heritage of not only the Pan-Hispanic people (whose language and cultures are more and more present in the everyday fabric of American life), but also the languages and cultures of the global societies that play a prominent role in international politics and the global economy. The study of Studio Art is crucial to students’ success in a multicultural and global society.
In accordance with these beliefs, the school has established a strong program in Studio Art from the Montessori or kindergarten level through grade 12. Membership includes a team leader; the chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and ESL, who oversees the language curriculum from K-12; the head of college counseling, who also coordinates the entire school’s AP program; the assistant head of the school; the head of the curriculum counsel; the upper, middle and lower school division heads; all foreign language department faculty (French, Japanese, Latin and Spanish); the middle and upper school librarians; and a member of the lower school language arts and science faculty from each level, who works in collaboration with the foreign language faculty to develop curricula offerings and collaborative, cross-disciplinary projects and thematic educational units. Chairs from other departments participate in an advisory capacity as well as in reviewing andapproving long-term curricular changes and decisions. The team has encouraged, and the foreign language department and school administration have supported (with funding and substitute coverage), faculty team member participation in AP workshops, Summer Institutes and conferences. Additionally, the team encourages all AP teachers to participate in the AP Reading. In recent years, members of the team have served as AP Readers in French, Latin, Spanish Language and Spanish Literature, and one department member serves actively as an AP workshop consultant.
In response to the aforementioned school and departmental goals, the AP Vertical Team has wholeheartedly embraced the inclusion of the word “culture” in course titles and the acknowledgement of its important role in the respective language courses along with the increased emphasis on a thematic approach to the course content. Following an evidence-centered, backward design approach to curriculum development (see Appendix D), and drawing on the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (discussed in Chapter 3), team members have revisited individual and programmatic course claims. Next, they have started to identify and list skills and content relevant to the six overarching themes and each theme’s set of recommended contexts. (For more information about these themes and recommended contexts, see “The Thematic Approach” in Chapter 4. Also see Appendix B: AP Curriculum Framework for Studio Art Courses.) Starting with just one of the themes, science and technology, the group is examining and sharing their observations about areas of thematic overlap in the vertical alignment, areas where they can develop horizontal alignment and inter- and intra-disciplinary learning with the science program and areas in need of more continuity, where recommended contexts may be further developed. Developing these contexts allows students to build upon their subject knowledge and skills and to engage in more advanced cognitive activities as they move from one level to the next. The science faculty and the school librarian have been especially helpful in suggesting, making available and obtaining resource materials to support the teaching of the science and technology theme. In addition to supporting the science curriculum, team members have also developed lessons in support of the programs in history and the social sciences and in art, for example, guest lecturing in global studies classes about Muslim Spain and the spread of humanism and early Renaissance ideas and thought in15th-century Spain.
Using the claims and corresponding achievement level descriptions for each of the three modes of communication (Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational) and following the principles of evidence-centered curriculum design, faculty team members have also worked to identify which of the skills and activities listed are already — or might be, where developmentally appropriate — incorporated into earlier-level language courses. For example, team members have designed class activities for courses leading up to AP to develop the skills described under Achievement Levels 3 and 4, as well as corresponding assessments to demonstrate student attainment of these skills at the appropriate stages of vertical alignment. By focusing on claims and themes, rather than on trying to follow a prescribed curriculum with specific course content, faculty members have enthusiastically drawn upon their own strengths, experiences, interests and areas of expertise to explore the course themes and to strengthen their vertical and horizontal alignment. (For a complete list of the claims, achievement level descriptions and corresponding skills, see Appendix B: AP Curriculum Framework for Studio art Courses. For more information about Evidence-Centered Design, see Appendix D.)
Similarly, team members have used the Course Description for AP Spanish Literature and the Latin and Spanish lists of required literary and critical terminology to identify the skills and knowledge that instructors already develop, or could develop, at earlier levels of the vertical alignment. In order to strengthen the horizontal alignment of the entire curriculum, the school has compiled a list of literary devices, their corresponding definitions and examples of their usage in English, French, Latin and Spanish texts. The list is distributed to all students in the ninth grade so that students, even in the beginning levels, learn to identify literary devices. This skill will serve them not only in the target language, but in English as well. Teaching students to identify literary devices such as metaphors, similes, alliteration and puns is an example strategy that can easily be adapted and integrated as early as the elementary school level or in beginning world language courses.
Finally, Saint Mary’s Hall has given special attention to training new faculty members. In addition to facilitating their attendance at AP workshops and Summer Institutes, the school has members of the administration and the AP Vertical Team observe and evaluate all faculty members. In addition, all teachers are required to make several peer observations of more experienced faculty both within and outside their language, and across disciplines. Team members discuss the implementation of new textbooks, work collaboratively to develop and conduct student assessments, and actively share lesson plans and ideas. Foreign language faculty also sponsor the school’s Model United Nations program and language clubs, and collaborate in support of various community service projects.